Woman pleads guilty to embezzling money, staging bank robbery

Gutierrez one of four people charged with theft, staging robbery

One of four former employees of a southwest Kansas bank accused of embezzling money from their employer has pleaded guilty, while a second defendant is scheduled to change her plea later this week.

Amber Gutierrez, 32, of Ulysses, pleaded guilty Monday to one count of theft from a bank. She admitted that from 2008 to July 24, 2010, while she was head teller at Western State Bank in Ulysses, she and two other bank employees embezzled just over $84,000.

Gutierrez and others staged a bank robbery July 24, 2010, to cover up their crimes, and later stole $24,450 more from the same bank, prosecutors said.

In addition to Gutierrez, others charged with stealing from the bank were Hattie Wiginton, 33; Ashley Cravens, 29; and Linda Wise, 60.

Gutierrez, Wiginton and Cravens were charged with two counts of embezzlement by a bank employee and one count of bank robbery. Wiginton also was charged with making a false statement to the FBI, while Wise was charged with one count of embezzlement.

Cravens is scheduled to change her plea on Friday, while Wiginton and Wise have jury trials set for Dec. 17.

Gutierrez was head teller and Wiginton and Cravens were clerks at the Ulysses bank when the three embezzled $84,200 by creating false cash deposit slips and putting the money into their personal accounts, prosecutors said.

They said Wiginton lied when she told FBI agents later on the day of the robbery that she didn’t know who robbed the bank, that there were two robbers and one of them was a man with a Hispanic accent.

From late 2010 until March 2013, Gutierrez, Cravens and Wise embezzled more money using falsified deposit slips, prosecutors said.

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Most of these inside jobs pilfering cash are done by women. Happens all the time, maybe they should have stayed home and let the man of the house earn the paycheck. But no, that's not good enough, they want money for things...lots of things.